Esplanade of Shattered Expetations
by phlossie
Summary: What do you risk? Fixing something when it's broken...


_Author's Notes: There are some warnings for this one, see end notes for details if you have specific feelings about certain tropes._ _\- if you're flexible read on!_

* * *

It slams into him from the side, like being hit by a freight train and he barely has time to think _What the fuck?_ before he impacts with the cold, stone escarpment.

"Jesus Christ, Stiles!" Someone is tapping at his face, but he cant seem to focus, "Jesus fucking Christ!"

Someone else skids to a halt on his other side and strong hands skim over his torso.

"Did he ever tell you what he wanted?" the voice is gravelly and familiar.

"WHAT? NO!"

"He's dying Scott." Someone lifts his arm.

"NO YOU CAN"T! NO!" There's a scuffle as Scott is dragged away. Stiles feels like he should be upset but he cant seem to remember why.

"Stiles, Stiles-" It's a new one, a girl, he knows because there's a long plait hanging over her shoulder. "Squeeze my hand if- understand." She slots her fingers into the limp curve of his and he squeezes them.

"Derek needs to- you want the- Stiles?"

He cant understand what she's trying to tell him, can't force his brain to process the aural information and he frowns, or at least, he thinks he does, he must frown.

"Stiles you're dying," The gruff one again. "do you want me to save you?"

 _Yes._

The strong hands come back, lifting his arm again and the girl grips the fingers of his other hand tensely.

Theres a sharp sting on his right wrist, then, all he feels is numb.

* * *

The Beta wolf had come out of nowhere and Scott watched in horrified paralysis as it ploughed through Stiles and careened off the edge of the embankment. His first coherent thought was that Stiles would follow it over the side, but his rag doll body crumpled against the rocky protrusion he had, till moments before, been hiding behind.

For the first time since he was sixteen and lost in the woods Scott's legs couldn't move fast enough.

"Stiles, STILES! Jesus _Christ!"_

He can't tear his eyes away from the blood bubbling out of Stiles mouth with every wheezy breath.

"He's dying Scott"

"NO! You cant! You hear me Derek!? YOU CAN"T!" He knew what Derek was trying to say, he knew how it made sense, but he couldn't bear it. Not _Stiles,_ not his best friend. "No!" he sobbed into Isaac's shoulder. The memory of Stiles twisted neck making him turn and hurl onto the furrowed dirt.

* * *

Lydia ran over the top of the hill to see Isaac drag Scott across the gully. She froze when she saw Stiles' broken shape below the rock-face. Derek was hunched next to him, curled around his forearm, shaking like a leaf.

She skidded down the scrubby slope, crouching down and snapping her fingers in front of Stiles face, a moment later his eyes laboriously focused on her, pupils dilating and contracting randomly.

"Can you hear me?"

There was no response, his glassy eyes remained unmoving and Derek whined.

She grabbed Stiles' limp hand "Squeeze my hand if you understand" it flexed and she let out a shaky breath.

"Derek has to give you the bite, but you have to tell him you want it. Do- do you want the bite Stiles?"

His eyes drift away from her and up to the foliage over their heads, a trickle of blood leaks from his nose and she just barely withholds her gag reflex.

"Stiles!?" his hand has gone slack in hers, "Stiles!" she squeezes it. "STILES!"

Derek is growling and it's reverberating in her rib cage, rattling her bones. The whole pack flattens themselves to the ground when he roars. Eyes red, right into Stiles' still face, little specks of spit scattering across his pallid skin.

When he sits back, Stiles' eyes are focused on his.

* * *

The guilt rips through him like a hurricane and he knows, he has to do this. Even if Stiles hates him for the rest of his life, even if he leaves... Derek cannot bear to let this happen, he cannot walk away.

Stiles might never forgive him, but he will never forgive himself if he doesn't.

He's done making decisions based on what other people want.

His glassy eyes focus and Derek chokes on the smell of death, then lets it coat his throat, welcomes it into his lungs so he can say what he needs to say.

"You're dying, do you want me to save you?"

He watches Stiles' impassive face as his eyes unfocus again.

Guilt and sadness pool in his gut, he's too late. _Always too late_.

"Derek, he squeezed my hand. He wants the bite! DEREK!" Lydia is almost hysterical, her fear so strong it nearly overpowers the smell of Stiles' dying body.

He raises his limp wrist to his lips.

Stiles cooling blood floods his mouth and he flinches, gripped by the urge to get it out of him, to get away from the taste and the smell of death and Derek realizes he may not forgive himself for _this_ either.

A deep sigh escapes Stiles bloodied lips and his breathing evens out. His heart no longer flutters like a trapped moth.

* * *

Almost everyone is packed into the loft, Derek had kicked the coffee table out of the way, cracking the drywall and splintering two of its legs, to make room for Stiles on the floor.

Lydia had taken the pillows and blankets off Derek's bed to wrap him, and Scott had cleaned Stiles up as best he could with a wet towel.

Isaac had made tea.

No one uttered a word as the sky turned from black to grey and the first rays of sunlight gilt the loft.

No one stirred when the morning sun passed above the roofline and they were plunged into shadow, nor when the sky outside passed from peach to lilac and finally they were left in blue-black starlight again.

When the first silver moonlight broke above the trees Stiles gasped into consciousness.

* * *

His first conscious thought was _How the hell am I alive?_

The pack, crowded around him, all seemed to be held in some kind of trance, frozen in surprise.

"Stiles" It was a wounded sound, and his heart skipped a beat when he realized it came from Derek. He'd never known the Alpha to be anything but confident or angry. There were times when... but they were fleeting.

"Hi"

It was like he'd broken a dam, everyone in the room started moving at once. Scott launched himself at Stiles at the same time as Lydia stood up sending Jackson sprawling, Erica scrambled across the couch, over Boyd, to fling herself at both him and Scott, and was quickly followed by Isaac. Kira bounded up and grabbed Liam and Cora dragging them into the pile after her.

Stiles was crushed, comfortably, beneath it all, when Derek's low rumbling growl shook the slab beneath him. Everyone was off him in a heartbeat.

"Dont rush him" Derek growled it as much as said it.

"What, why?" Stiles looked at him bewildered and the others all looked at _him_ in complete shock. "Whats going on?"

"Stiles," Scott frowned at him "Derek bit you... You're a werewolf."

"Oh... yeah" he'd forgotten about that. He looked down at himself, he didn't _feel_ any different. "Yeah..."

"Stiles?" Scott leant down, "You okay?"

 _I'm a_ _Werewolf_.

He grinned up at his best friend. "Yeah, I'm great."

* * *

It had been almost a week since he'd been bitten, almost a week since he'd nearly died, and Stiles still hadn't done anything _wolfy_.

He'd gone to work, played lacrosse, been home, gone to Pack night and been dumped on his ass by at least three of the others before Derek called it off.

Now they were all sitting in Derek's living room trying to get him to shift.

Scott punched his arm.

"Ow."

"Nothing" Lydia stated as she walked off.

"Yes thank you Lyds, I know." He snapped as she began sifting through her bag for something. He couldn't help but feel a little sensitive about his apparent werewolf impotence. "Maybe I'm just really well anchored... you know, because I was already part of a stable pack before I was turned and I'm not a hormonal teenager like the rest of you were-" someone growled, it might have been Jackson "-when you were bitten?"

Derek was watching from his corner, Stiles' inability to perform seemed to have sent him back five years in development.

Erica sidled up next to him and he tensed, expecting another blow, instead she grabbed him by the back of the neck. It was a trick Stiles had been known to use from time to time on Jackson as it elicited a violent negative reaction and, according to Scott, was extremely unpleasant for the wolf.

He felt nothing, or rather, he felt exactly as he would if someone had done it to him when he was human.

"Ummm…" Erica awkwardly let go of his neck.

"He doesn't smell right." Boyd rumbled and Stiles flailed in surprise at the sound so close behind him.

"Hey! I smell fine!"

Lydia shoved something into his face that had everyone else in the room backed up against the walls.

"Jeez, a bit of warning would be nice!" Isaac's voice was muffled by his shirt which he'd pulled up over his mouth.

Stiles looked cross eyed at the little dried plant she was waving under his nose. "Wolfsbane?"

She nodded. "I think that probably proves it."

"Not definitely." Allison pushed off the back of the couch where she'd been watching the proceedings, and put her hand out to him. "Palm up" Stiles saw the flash of silver in her hand and understood.

She ran the knife across his skin leaving a hot, red trail behind. Derek growled from the corner, but Stiles gave him a look and he backed off. Stupid overprotective Alphas.

They all stood and watched the blood begin to dry on his skin.

"It should have healed by now…" Scott's nose was wrinkled slightly.

Stiles grabbed a tissue.

"Well that settles that then" Allison wiped her dagger and slid it back into its holster as Lydia corked her vial of Wolfsbane. "He's not a Werewolf."

The others began talking amongst themselves and Derek approached him. He took Stiles wrist and carefully lifted his cut palm to his nose, inhaling. The rush of air tickled Stiles skin and he shivered involuntarily. Watching the Alpha carefully.

"You smell like magic"

* * *

That night as he lay in bed he wondered what it meant. To smell like magic, but not _be_ magic.

What it meant to be bitten but not change.

He'd have to explain it to his Dad...

He still hasn't _told_ his Dad. He didn't know how… there didn't seem to be a sensitive way of saying it.

He tests the words out, to see how they sound. "I died… _I_ _Died,_ and I survived, but I'm not human anymore… I'm not me…" He stares at the crack in the ceiling. "I'm not me…"

There's a tap at the window and he jerks out of bed, thoughts scattering like shards of glass.

Derek lifts the pane and slips over the sill like the two movements are part of a well choreographed dance.

Stiles picks himself up from the floor. "S'up?"

"Nothing, I just…" He trails off, eyes shifting around the room.

This has happened a few times since- well, since. Enough for Stiles to know a kind of routine, Derek would turn up, no reason, not even the pretense of a reason, and sit morosely in the chair by the door. Stiles would finish whatever he was doing and go to bed. Derek would be gone in the morning.

Tonight though, tonight he was just scared enough to poke the bear.

"Wanted to guilt trip yourself a bit more?" That earned him a startled look. "Because you bit me and I hadn't agreed to it? Couldn't agree to it? You wanted to come torture yourself a bit more did you? So you can justify jumping in front of the next bullet? We'll guess what Derek? I'm glad you did it" the Wolf flinched. "I'd be glad you bit me even if I'd become a Werewolf! I'm glad you bit me even though _we don't know what the fuck I am!"_ He took a step forward, into Derek's space. "I'm glad you bit me because now my father isn't trying to organize my _funeral_ through an alcoholic haze! I'm glad you bit me because now Scott wont have to carry my coffin when he's _only 23!_ So you know what? You can take your _Self Indulgent, Insensitive_ , _WALLOWING! AND STICK IT UP YOUR FUCKING ARSE! BECAUSE I DONT WANT TO SEE IT!"_

He'd advanced on Derek as he shouted, cornering him, pushing back till he couldn't go any further. Now he's right up in his face, shaking with anger as Derek cowers and it moves something inside of him, some visceral, primal thing that wants to scream, to shake the foundations of the earth with how strongly it _feels_ , but cant possibly roar loud enough to express it all. He can feel it buzz under his skin, like anxiety, like excitement, like nothing good but not like anything bad. He can feel everything and nothing and it's all bursting out of him...

...and it hits him like a freight train. Because he's not alive, but he's not dead, the boy he used to be is gone and he's still not a man, but that doesn't mean he can't exist. He does exist, against all the odds. He's here, and how can Derek possibly think that is a bad thing?

* * *

He has nowhere to go, he cant hide from this, can't hide from Stiles. Stiles who is stripping him bare and leaving nothing behind. Tearing him to pieces. His rage is palpable, projected into an almost physical force that leaves him winded, unable to look Stiles in the eye.

He shakes with conviction, bearing down on him until there is no room left. No space between them and he's yelling into his face. Derek has to meet his eyes then, and up close he can see the fire in them, the whiskey set alight, turned orange by the heat of his anger.

Except, the color doesn't leave when the shouting stops. When they're both panting into each others air. Wrecked by the severity of the storm, the strength of feeling.

"You deserved better than me" He doesn't know why he says it, doesn't know why he chooses now of all times to bring it up. It doesn't even follow particularly well, except that it does, because there's always a subtext and its always about this, unspoken _thing_ between them. The wall that simultaneously pulls them together and keeps them apart.

And Stiles- He understands. He always understands. "I don't _want_ better than you."

Derek closes his eyes, lets out his shuddering breath into the breach between them and sobs onto the cloth of Stiles t-shirt, Clinging like a drowning man when his knees give out and they stumble blindly to the bed.

Stiles arranges him gently, lying the blankets over him and then curling around him like a wall of protection.

"It's okay, I forgive you, It's okay" He whispers over and over again against Derek's hair. "You're gonna be alright now, It's okay"

When he finally calms, when nine years of guilt and grief have washed away and all thats left are smoke stained memories and the fragile husk of the person he has come to be, Stiles takes his face between his hands and gently, carefully, like Derek is made of paper thin glass, presses a kiss to his lips.

"We're gonna be okay."

* * *

 _Author's Notes: Stiles has a very near death experience and is given the bite to save his life, his consent is dubious at best. He is not however turned into a wolf, he is turned into a something (you could read it that he is magic, but thats a very loose interpretation.) use your imagination. See what you wanna see. and let me know actually, I'd be really interested to know what you think happened! :)_


End file.
